Programmatic SDKs Overview

MoveIt Pro exposes the same ROS 2 surface to all programmatic clients. Whatever transport you choose, the available endpoints, message types, and runtime semantics are identical — only the client library and connection mechanics differ.

This section is organized by feature. Each feature page shows the same workflow in every supported transport, switchable through tabs.

Choose a Transport

Two transports are supported:

• Native ROS 2 Client Libraries (RCL) — rclpy (Python) or rclcpp (C++). The client process joins the ROS 2 graph directly via DDS.
• Websocket Client Libraries — roslibpy (Python), roslibjs (JavaScript), rossharp (C#), roslibrust (Rust), jrosbridge (Java), and others. The client speaks the rosbridge JSON protocol over a websocket to MoveIt Pro's rosbridge_server.

	Native RCL	Websocket via rosbridge
Client requirements	ROS 2 install matching the MoveIt Pro distro (Humble or Jazzy). Same DDS network.	Any language with a websocket library. No ROS 2 install required.
Transport	DDS over the local network.	TCP/WebSocket to port 3201 on the robot.
Network friendliness	DDS multicast can be finicky across subnets / VPNs.	Single TCP port — easier to firewall and proxy.
Latency	Lower — direct DDS.	Higher — JSON serialization and websocket hop.
Best for	ROS-native applications, on-robot integrations.	Browser apps, mobile apps, fleet managers, or any non-ROS process.
Cancellation	Goal handle is a first-class ROS 2 type.	Goal ID returned by send_goal — must be retained to cancel.

If your client is already a ROS 2 node, use RCL. If it is anything else — a browser, a fleet manager, a process on a different OS — use the websocket transport.

What You Can Do

Each guide below shows the workflow with rclpy and roslibpy side by side:

• Run an existing Objective — execute an Objective by name, optionally cancel it, or call it synchronously through the /execute_objective service.
• Run an Objective from a custom Behavior Tree XML — send a Behavior Tree as a string at runtime, including Subtree port remapping.
• Pass parameters to Objectives at runtime — inject blackboard values without editing the Objective XML.
• Invoke a Python service from a Behavior — bridge a rclpy service into an Objective via CallTriggerService.

Setup

Native RCL

Install ROS 2 matching the distro that MoveIt Pro is running (Humble for Ubuntu 22.04, Jazzy for Ubuntu 24.04) and source its setup script before running your client. Add moveit_studio_sdk_msgs to your package.xml so the action and service definitions are available.

Websocket via rosbridge

The MoveIt Pro Runtime runs a rosbridge server listening on port 3201. To connect across the network, expose that port in the robot's firewall settings.

roslibpy's ROS 2 action support is only on the GitHub main branch as of this writing — install accordingly:

Ubuntu 24.04 (with venv)

python3 -m venv ~/roslibpy_venv
source ~/roslibpy_venv/bin/activate
pip install git+https://github.com/RobotWebTools/roslibpy.git@main

Activate the venv (source ~/roslibpy_venv/bin/activate) before running scripts that use roslibpy.

Ubuntu 22.04

pip install git+https://github.com/RobotWebTools/roslibpy.git@main

Through the rosbridge protocol you have access to the full ROS messaging system inside MoveIt Pro.